SHOE DESIGN, FESTIVAL SHOE

When shoes are produced glue plays an important role in the production proces. To construct with glue is easy but it also entails a lot of negative aspects. The glue that is used for producing shoes is harmful for the environment. Besides this the glue also makes it difficult to recycle a shoe. Within the assignment my goal was to design a shoe that doesn’t need glueing, therefore I chose to use rubber as a material to work with.

By analyzing the rubber I discovered some important properties of het material. For example, the unvulcanized rubber is very good to use for vacuum forming. At sixty degrees the rubber malleable as clay and at thirty degrees the rubber paste sticks to each other so that glue is unnecessary. The rubber has the property to easily take on any structure. My final shoe is completely produced without glue. The shoe provides protection against the rain and keeps your feet dry, besides this its also a material that is easy to clean therefore the shoe is ideal for a festival environment.

For this assignment I’ve had a co-operation with a rubber manufacturing company specializing in rubber extrusions called TPP (Technical Production Profiles ). They have given me more insight in the material and process. Together we have looked at what rubbers were suitable for the shoe.